Why is Life So Cray Cray?

And yes, I used the words cray cray.  Since my last post...

It's been very busy, and I've barely been the in the classroom.  At the end of February, I attended the National Conference on Bullying and Child Victimization.  I mentioned agreeing to this in a previous post.  I learned a lot about bullying.  What it is, and what it isn't.  A quick run down for those that don't know:

• There needs to be an imbalance of power.  For example, a group of students against one student or upperclassmen against lowerclassmen.  
• It needs to be repeated.

If there isn't an imbalance of power or it's not repeated, it might be mean (and still needs to be handled), but it's not bullying.

Don't label:

• A student who bullies instead of calling the student a bully.
• The targeted student instead of the victim.

We took the red eye out so we could spend one day at Universal and experience the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.  It was amazing.  I can't wait to experience the one here in California.  

We also did a half-day pass to Seaworld, which was within walking distance of our hotel, and enjoyed the afternoon and evening there.

At Universal, Seaworld, the hotel, and the restaurant across the street, I was consistently amazed at how friendly everyone in Florida was.

The biggest takeaway, the session that stood out to me most at this conference, was the one I attended for the One Leg at a Time group.  This is a student-led initiative and not an adult one (there are of course adults involved).  It was really amazing and inspiring to see these kids take an active role in being better people and trying to get their classmates to be better people too.

I had three days in the classroom when I got back--interrupted by the weekend--before I had to be pulled out with half the department to grade district writing assessments, which is never fun and--considering our school does school-wide writing four times a yea--very unnecessary for us.  

I finally had a full week with my kids after that, though time with my 10th graders was interrupted with registration one day, and then another time this past week.

Then, I was out the last two days for CUE 2016. But, before that...

All hell broke loose on campus because of a phone app called Ogle.  I was notified about it by a student early Tuesday morning before my 10th graders registered.  I downloaded it to see what the student was talking about and showed admin right away. It is a horrible, horrible app that the students are using to bully and demean each other and staff (the post about me is so awful and vulgar that I can't show you) and distribute porn (including nudes of each other).  

Threats were made against the school through this app, which is anonymous, and now the FBI is involved.  

Despite the horrid way many of us were made to feel, there were a few lights that this darkness revealed:

• Many students are willing to report such behavior and do what they need to to protect themselves and their friends.
• Many students care enough about their teachers (me) to stand up against those that say vile things about them.

The week before all this went down, I was put in charge of the group of kids called Safe School Ambassadors I talked about before.  I have a feeling/am hoping that a lot more students want to join us for tomorrow's meeting and make a difference in the culture of the school and how we treat each other.

The Bad Idea Factory

Today was a Passion Project Day.  It is only the 3rd one, but I'm already getting a little worried about it.

You'll be able to see from the pictures below that passion for the Passion Project seemed to wane as the day went on.

Today's goal was to start generating ideas, both good and bad.  I am getting a lot of my ideas from Kevin Brookhouser's book, The 20Time Project. One of his ideas was the Bad Idea Factory.  It sounded like a good idea and a possibly rocking good time with the kids, so I wanted to try it. 

I did a little google searching for other teachers that gave it a try.  I came across a blog post of Karl Lindgren-Streicher's on the day he tried it in his classroom.  He talked about how he 'borrowed' from Kevin Brookhouser and Kate Petty (I've met her in person through a friend.  She was my sister's teacher.).  I pretty much did the same thing he did.  It sounded fabulous.

So, my plan was to have them free write on some questions about things they have always wanted to do for about 20-25 minutes.  These were some of the comments I heard and exchanges I had during the free write session:

"Miss Barron, what if I want to be a median?"

"A median?  You mean like in math or in the middle of a road?"

"No, like with your mind."

"Oh, you mean medium."


"I want to learn how to drive using my feet"


"Miss Barron, how do you spell bungee?"


 For the most part, the free write portion went well.  The Bad Idea Factory portion on the other hand. . . went really well too - during 1st period.  The kids and I had a blast and they did a pretty good job of filling the board up (as you can see).

Period 1

Things started to wane a bit as the day went on...

Period 2

Period 3

Things in 4th period with the 11th graders (periods 1-3 are 10th grade honors students) seemed to pick up a bit, but the majority of what is on the board was written by one student whose bad ideas all had to do with cars.

Period 4

Period 5

 I was a little disappointed in 5th period.  There were some "bad ideas" that I erased before taking this picture because they weren't very nice to certain people.  It made me kind of sad that they didn't seem to know what they were essentially saying was hurtful.

This activity just didn't go as well as I thought it would based on the descriptions from Kevin Brookhouser and Karl Lindgren-Streicher.  I'm wondering if it has to do with the socioeconomic and racial make up of my students.

There was one point during 4th period were a student noticed that one of the bad ideas was actually a good one, or could be turned into a good one:  texting while driving.  I used the opportunity to have them explain how we could turn that into a good project.  They came up with one I hope one of them does:  create a campaign to warn teenagers of the dangers of texting while driving.


I guess I can chalk this one up to a mostly misadventure. 

Project and Padlet Pensiveness

Forgive the title but I love me some alliteration.

My 10th grade Honors students are about to embark on a reading of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club.  Before they read, I assigned a research project.  A small one.  I found the idea online last year and adapted it for my own needs.  Here is a copy of the handout.

The students will choose a topic in pairs or groups to research and create a presentation that incorporates an online tool to share with the class so that everyone gets a little background on Chinese culture before the book.  The students do the presentation together but write their own paper.

Theoretically, the presentations should have only taken a day, but today is day two and we still have some for tomorrow.  In my opinion, these are the possible reasons for the delay:

• Students in my second group were not ready yesterday and only about 3 groups went.  The groups that went today cannot get an A on the presentation due to the fact that they weren't ready yesterday.
• Students didn't have their online tools ready to go.  It ate up a lot of time to log into accounts and bring presentations up.  Next time, I'm going to insist that students provide me a link that I can click on in the assignment on Classroom.
• I insisted that students give feedback on a Padlet wall (more on that below) and that took up some time between each presentation.

Some students got very creative (and one group brought in food) in some of their presentations.  Those that created videos seemed to do the best in engaging the class.  Some students didn't pay attention to the fact that I wanted more than for them to just stand up there and go through their Google Slides (sigh).

In my own graduate work, I was instructed to create or adapt a project that had students collaborating via technology somehow.  I chose to use the research project to fulfill this assignment.  I decided to use Padlet and create a wall for students to leave notes to each group giving their feedback. 

Here is Period 4's.  

I had the wall set to free form at first and that was just a fuster cluck of wading through the notes.  I switched it to grid view and immediately sighed with relief.  As did the students when they saw it the next day (some actually thought I went through and spent the time hand organizing it at first).  I think I'll set it that way automatically next time.

Ultimately, I like Padlet so far, and I think it's a good way to have students give feedback and be mindful of what they are saying because other people can see it.

Have you used Padlet?  Something better?  Let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

Feeling like a Failure

Only my second post and it's already got the word 'failure' in the title.

Today is one of those days I feel like a failure as a teacher.  My three 11th grade classes took a test on Rhetorical Devices today.  Obviously, they didn't do too well, so that means that I didn't do too well. So, together: We suck.

I don't know if it's truly my fault they did poorly or if it's actually the fault of the test because I won't have other teachers to compare myself to until next week.  Ultimately, it doesn't matter because I feel I should have better prepared them regardless.

I've been questioning myself all day.  Should I have stood up and done a PowerPoint with the rhetorical devices on it and had the students take notes, or fill in a skeleton guide like many of the other teachers?  Or, was the fact that I put together the slides and titled them with the names of the different rhetorical devices and had the students find the definitions and examples to place on it the right way to go?

So the next step is to wonder.  Is it me as a teacher in general, or does this transition into blended-learning and inquiry-based/guided-question style of teaching the culprit?  Maybe it's a combination.

I've set up a form for the students to take a survey, so I can get some feedback from them.  I think I need to evaluate what and when I should allow students to discover answers on their own and through their own searching and when to get up and be a 'sage on the stage'.  Maybe we jumped off into the deep end when we should have used the steps in the shallows.

Trying to make this shift and beginning my Master's in Educational Technology is both a blessing and a curse as I am learning about things that definitely help in this transition, but I feel very overwhelmed and like I'm leaving friends and family behind.